


Gave the World Away For You

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can run half a world and a universe away, but he can't leave Olivia Dunham behind. Post-2x22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gave the World Away For You

**Author's Note:**

> Also archived at [Dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/23012.html); if you have open ID, please consider commenting there so I can thank you properly! The title is (unsurprisingly) from _I Wanna_ , by the All American Rejects, proving once and for all that even if I switch fandoms, my pairings will somehow always revolve around punk rock.

  


  
_Gave the World Away For You_   
  


  
**I**

“What’s she like?”

It takes her longer to ask than he thought it would, but he still has no answer ready.

“Who?”

“Me.”

She should say it with the same expression the real Olivia wears when it’s obvious, all guileless smile and wide green eyes. Instead she wears a half smirk like armor.

“She’s a lot like you.” He knows it for a lie as soon as he says it, and forces himself to look at her, playing the game. _One of these things is not like the other._ He thinks of Olivia, staring down a silent square of tiny lights.

“Darker in the eyes maybe.”

Olivia, peering around the corner of a door, shaking with the desperate need to help someone.

“She’s always trying to make up for something. Right some imaginary wrong.”

Olivia, crouched in the corner of a room that somehow still held the memory of smoke.

“Haunted, I guess.” She doesn’t smile, doesn’t relax, doesn’t move. She just watches him through unfamiliar bangs, her eyes younger and harder and pinned on him like he’s a damn insect. His Olivia would have spoken by now.

He repeats that thought, just once, a train wreck of realisation.

“Maybe she’s nothing like you at all.” He swallows his memories and his guilt, turning back to the window. There are buildings that never existed. He stares at them, counting windows that don’t belong, and reminds himself that even in the other world, she’s not his Olivia.

  
 **II**

He can’t help the grin when he opens the door; he might have a frankly disturbing haircut, but Charlie Francis is a welcome sight just the same. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Come on in.”

Dimly it occurs to him to be concerned; not because there are federal agents talking to him again, but because his brain is awash with endorphins, happy to know that in some universe, Charlie lived and Olivia got her man.

He pushes that thought aside with practiced ease, and focuses on what Olivia – the other Olivia, he reminds himself – is saying. She hands him a note, folded in four.

“This was given to me by an acquaintance of your father. An Observer.”

“An Observer?” _One of these things_ , and he looks at her properly. Her eyes are greener. _Exhaustion_. Her hair is still wrong. _Delayed post-traumatic reaction_. Her hands are not crossed behind her back.

For one moment, he convinces himself what’s in front of him is only in his mind. But she’s still talking, impossible words that lodge in his mind for later.

Her hair is still wrong, but her eyes are wide and green and haunted like they should be.

“Liv, what the hell are you talking about?” Charlie’s hand has barely a second to graze the hilt of his pistol. Peter has even less to jump backward when she swings the bottle.

“Peter, it’s me.”

“I think I just figured that out.” He stoops to collect the paper he dropped, and for the second time in a week his world shatters. He knows that machine. This Walter – hell, maybe all the Walters, because if there’s two universes, why not three, or six, or twenty five? – this Walter is no better than the man who stole another man’s son.

  
 **III**

“I’m sorry.”

He has to ask, has to acknowledge. They both know it’s about more than his father.

“How long have you known?”

She looks at the table. It’s not quickly enough for him to miss the tears welling in her eyes.

“A few weeks.”

 _Jacksonville_. He doesn’t even need to say the name of the godforsaken town. He remembers in perfect clarity. The look in her eyes when he'd asked her for drinks; the look in her eyes when he’d answered the door. The alpha and omega.

He thought he’d left his anger behind, slipped it off like a winter coat and left it piled on the floor of a silent hotel corridor. Apparently he was wrong. He cuts her off as “I’m sorry” makes its way to her lips again.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let him do this.”

“I don’t think that he can, not without you.” She pauses, watching him. “Peter… You don’t belong here.”

“No, I don’t belong here.” She nods, unblinking. He’s almost sick of seeing her eyes and not her eyes pealing layers from him. He ignores the ghostly smile that he knows means relief, choking back bitterness as he continues. “But I don’t belong there either.”

“Yes you do.”

In two years, he has seen Olivia Dunham angry, furious, and tear-the-world-apart livid. He’s seen her determined and defeated. Once he has seen her scared. Just once.

Until now.

She steps minutely closer; he pretends he can’t feel her shaking through the space between them.

“I’ve thought of a hundred reasons why you should come back. To… to fight the shapeshifters, to take care of Walter, to – to save the world.” Her hair still smells of peroxide and ammonia. There are circles under her eyes, and he slips his hand into his pocket, lest it stray to brush them away.

“But in the end, you have to come back.” _Peter, I’m scared_. “Because you belong with me.”

_I’ve never met anyone who can do the things that you do._

They’re not in Jacksonville. The world isn’t ending yet. But there are tears on her cheeks when she kisses him, and the hand that curls over his heart tells him that hers did when he disappeared from a hotel in Washington.

He slips his arm around her waist, around the jacket that isn’t hers, and imagines them a world where the buildings are in their proper places, Zeppelins are only a memory and she doesn’t have to be scared of losing him again.

  


_fin._   



End file.
